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File photo shows the gas gathering plant on a hilltop at the Southern California Gas Company’s Aliso Canyon storage facility near the Porter Ranch neighborhood of Los Angeles. A third of the wells that inject natural gas into underground storage were taken out of service weeks after a troubled Los Angeles facility restarted following a massive blowout. Southern California Gas Co. said Monday, Sept. 11, 2017, that it notified state regulators in August that 13 of the 39 wells at Aliso Canyon were shut down after detecting a pressure buildup. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

New regulations for California’s 14 natural-gas storage fields will improve safety, but facilities in the San Fernando Valley, Playa del Rey and Valencia pose higher health and security risks because they are located near large communities, a panel of scientists concluded in a report released Thursday.

The nonpartisan California Council on Science and Technology released a three-part study – about 1,000 pages, all told – to answer three questions raised by Gov. Jerry Brown and Senate Bill 826 after the massive natural-gas blowout in Aliso Canyon in 2015:

Do underground natural-gas facilities pose a risk to safety, health, the environment and the climate?

Is natural gas needed through 2020?

How does the state’s climate policies change the future need for underground gas storage?

More than a dozen scientists and researchers worked with another 21 specialists. They examined historical documents, diagrams, reports, and other resources – and found that natural-gas fields were still needed as the state transitions into using other forms of energy.

In addition, the researchers said the facilities will be safer because of tighter regulations implemented this year – a result of the Aliso Canyon blowout. But researchers also said California has room to explore new energy sources that are safer.

“The risks of underground gas storage can be mitigated through appropriate and sensible regulation,” said Jens Birkholzer, director of the Energy Geosciences Division at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who co-led the effort. “The new state regulations coming into effect this year will greatly reduce the likelihood of future gas storage-well blowouts.”

Jane Long, an independent scientific consultant, another co-leader of the research, said the report highlights the need to make energy reliability a central part of future climate plans.

“California should lead the way in developing a complete assessment of future energy systems that will maintain California’s economic and environmental health with energy that is both clean and reliable,” Long said.

Researchers, however, focused much of the report on the natural-gas blowout in Aliso Canyon, where in October, 2015, one of the 115 wells ruptured, sending more than 100,000 metric tons of natural gas spewing into the air. The four-month leak prompted thousands of residents in nearby Porter Ranch to leave their homes after reporting various illnesses.

Brown issued a state of emergency, but has not called for an immediate shutdown of the facility. A response by the governor to the new report was not immediately available.

Although the root cause of the blowout is still to be determined and is being studied by Blade Energy, researchers with CCST said it “appears that there was a hole in the casing of the SS-25 well,” noted Amber Mace, deputy director for the group.

” All of us working in (underground natural-gas storage) are very interested in knowing where (at what depth) the hole was and what caused it,” Mace said. “We hope that Blade Energy will be able to answer these questions.”

Another concern raised by the researchers was the kinds of chemicals in the natural gas that escaped from the facility until the leak was capped in February of 2016. It’s still unclear what residents were exposed to –and why there were so many reports of headaches, bloody noses and nausea. The Southern California Gas Co, operators of Aliso Canyon natural-gas fields, have not released a list of the ingredients, researchers said.

SoCalGas officials would not comment on the CCST statement, but instead issued a response saying the report agrees that natural gas must be stored during periods of low demand to keep it available during peak demand.

“Further, potential risks associated with underground storage can be managed and SoCalGas has already introduced industry-leading safety practices that state regulators and independent experts have referred to as the most comprehensive in the nation,” said SoCalGas spokesman Chris Gilbride in a statement. “SoCalGas has and will continue to support sensible regulations that promote safety at natural-gas storage and delivery systems.”

Meanwhile, the California Public Utilities Commission is currently considering the feasibility of minimizing or eliminating the use of Aliso Canyon while still maintaining energy and electric reliability for the Los Angeles region, said spokeswoman Terrie Prosper.

But Porter Ranch residents and activists who fear Aliso Canyon remains unsafe say the report confirms why the natural-gas field should be shut down.

“Every day thousands of Los Angeles residents are continually sickened by continued operations at the Aliso Canyon storage facility,” said Alexandra Nagy, senior organizer for the advocacy group Food & Water Watch. “Aliso Canyon must be the first facility to be decommissioned in a new era of getting off fossil fuel infrastructure and transitioning the state to 100 percent renewable energy.”

State Senator Henry Stern (D-Canoga Park) said there were too many unanswered questions about Aliso Canyon, which is why it remains unsafe to keep open.

“We still don’t know why Aliso Canyon blew, and unfortunately this report does not answer those questions,” Stern said. “But it does show that the public and state regulators are in the dark about the risks of wildfires, earthquakes and corporate malfeasance at gas storage facilities throughout California.”

Researchers with the CCST offered several recommendations to reduce the risk at natural-gas facilities across California, including:

Require that the composition of gas withdrawn be disclosed along with any chemical use on site that could be leaked;

Require air and weather data collection equipment to be installed at all facilities.

“If a hazard has not been identified, then it is difficult to develop steps to mitigate potential harm in a risk management plan,” according to researchers. ” In this case, a useful approach is to avoid the problem where possible, for example by choosing chemicals that are better understood, less toxic, or more controllable rather than choosing ones for which there is little toxicity information or poor understanding of the relationship between the hazard and risk to the environment and/or to public health.”